Auto updating a python executable generated with pyinstaller

Question

I have a desktop app that I'm working on and I am using PyInstaller to generate de distribution files.

I have chosen PyInstaller over py2exe because it is very easy to use and I don't need to care about windows dlls, but when I use py2exe I can simply use Esky to autoupdate, but I can't use it with PyInstaller.

So I don't know how to start a auto-updating application. Someone have some thoughts or just know how can I use PyInstaller and esky?

Answer 1

You can create a launcher application for your main application and add all the update logic there. The launcher application does the following:

Displays a pop up (this gives a quick feedback to the user that the program is loading)

Checks the local and repository versions

if local < remote (say v1.0 < v2.0) then:

.... Check at the remote repository for the existence of an updater application called updater_v2.0.exe.

........ If there is one: download it run it and exit. (see bellow)

........ If there is not: download the latest main application exe and replace the local one (beware of file access rights at this step -- you're trying to write to c:\program files).

if local > remote then:

.... Display an error/warning except if this is a developers workstation (you need a setting for this)

Start up the main application.

The purpose of the updater application is to accommodate cases where fetching a fresh main application exe is not enough. I also use it in order to update the launcher application itself (that's why the launcher is exiting as soon as it runs the updater - BTW give windows a bit of time before trying to overwrite the laucher executable)

Answer 2

as of today pyinstaller has only experimental python3 support. If anyone wants to use esky i would recommend using cx freeze. It supports python 2 and 3 and works on linux mac and windows

You are then able to use esky. Esky has the advantage of working with a bootstrap mechanism so that you always have at least one runnable version installed.

Answer 3

I ran into the same issue some time ago--so I wrote a small library (updater4pyi) to do exactly that on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. You can get it from PyPI for example with

> pip install updater4pyi

The source repository is at: https://github.com/phfaist/updater4pyi.

This is a small and not very mature project. It's meant to be as flexible as possible, not relying for example on any specific gui toolkit. I have done some testing on the different platforms, but there may still be bugs. I hope it might be useful to someone else, too.

Answer 4

There is also PyUpdater. I see it is not cited here

Answer 5

As @djvg noted in a comment the most current (2023) approach and working demo is https://github.com/dennisvang/tufup

Pyupdater esky and others are all archived.